Marvel's Agents of SHIELD: Season 1Review

Note (9/10/14): With Marvel's Agents of SHIELD: Season 1 on DVD and Blu-ray this week, we're re-featuring our review of the season.

Full spoilers for the first season of Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD follow.

Expectations can be a tough thing to manage, and man were expectations high for Agents of SHIELD. But how could they not be? A new Joss Whedon-created TV show would be reason alone to celebrate, even knowing he wouldn't be involved in its day-to-day operation. And a new Marvel Studios-created TV show -- tying into the amazingly successful and well-received Marvel Cinematic Universe films -- was also, in and of itself, a huge reason to be excited. But combine both of those things, with Whedon white hot off the The Avengers and this was the show to beat going into the fall TV season last fall.

All of which is to say, when SHIELD failed to deliver on those expectations, people were understandably upset. I didn’t agree with a lot of the proclamations that the show was a total bust last fall, but I could understand why they were occurring – if any show was one we all wanted to be appointment viewing, it was this one. By “merely” delivering a fun, lighthearted, but fairly disposable piece of entertainment, SHIELD was a letdown. I often enjoyed SHIELD, sure, but I wanted to love it. More importantly, I wanted to feel like it was a show I couldn’t miss each week, and for many episodes, that wasn’t happening.

There were some odd decisions made in the conception of the show, to be sure. I still don’t understand the choice to make not one, not two, but three of the six main characters all start out as notably young, tech-savvy rookies, who were unprepared for combat. It felt both redundant and frustrating, since it made this an action series where half the characters weren’t ready to go into action. There’s always a place for both the rookie and the techie on a show of this sort, but this was just a very strange dynamic to begin with – particularly when the joke of Fitz and Simmons finishing each other’s sentences and acting so similarly initially only reinforced the idea of these characters feeling the same.

In general, the character work is where SHIELD struggled the most early on. It was understood that this would be a series focusing on normal humans existing in the world of the MCU – Coulson and a new batch of characters reacting and responding to the amazing events around them. Which is a perfectly decent set-up, if you care about the people the show is centering on. But the SHIELD crew were very poorly defined for many episodes. There was a lot of talk of a familial bond without feeling it and the show’s sense of humor was hit or miss, with genuinely funny moments sometimes followed by duds or scenes that took the jokiness too far.

Led by Clark Gregg, the performances were all good, and there was no character I actively disliked, but there were plenty of trouble spots. Ming-Na Wen was awesome as Melinda May, but it took quite awhile to get any other side of her besides the stoic badass (the fling with Ward helped, in terms of feeling much more down to Earth). Skye especially began to become a strain on the show, not because of how she was portrayed as much as because of how she was talked about in such reverent terms, particularly by Coulson, which just hadn’t been earned from an audience perspective. We kept being told she was an amazing, brave, highly accomplished and truly special person but little on screen justified that type of adulation.

Despite these issues, SHIELD did offer fun content on an ongoing basis. Strong guest stars included Peter MacNicol, Ian Hart and Patton Oswalt and nice recurring roles for J. August Richards and Ruth Negga (and eventually Bill Paxton, having a ball as Agent Garrett). And while it took several episodes, characters like Fitz and Simmons began to finally take shape a bit more and feel more individualized. I came to be quite impressed by the work of Elizabeth Henstridge as Simmons, who turned into this show's real find – delivering on some big emotional beats when called upon to do so.

While many ongoing storylines on SHIELD – the mystery of Coulson’s return, Skye’s parentage, etc. – moved far too slow, with relatively minor revelations treated as though they were big reveals, the show began to more consistently deliver exciting and better-paced adventures through the season, such as a trip to the facility where Fitz and Simmons were trained (setting up Marvel villain Blizzard) and a great guest appearance by Jaime Alexander as Lady Sif.

And then Captain America: Winter Soldier opened and things really changed. The events of that movie had massive repercussions on Agents of SHIELD, which were immediately felt on the series. The entire SHIELD organization in shambles, the reveal of Hydra in their midst and the discovery that Ward was a Hydra agent were all really cool, engaging events, which were integral in the series becoming much stronger in the final episodes of the season.

The Cap 2 events essentially forced the show’s pace to pick up and the betrayals happening all around finally gave the show more of an edge, as things had been too light-hearted up until then. The sense of humor and lightness in Marvel projects and in Joss Whedon projects has always been a strength, but early on, SHIELD lacked the other elements that helped to balance things out and inject some danger into the proceedings. The Hydra reveal delivered this at last.

By the end of Season 1, SHIELD was starting to come into its own – I say starting, because I still feel even more work can be done on this front. But there is reason for optimism going into Season 2. The producers have no doubt heard the complaints about Season 1 and the show was already displaying signs of improvement before the post-Cap 2 episodes really kicked things into gear. The new dynamic we’re moving into also sounds encouraging, as Coulson in charge of a much smaller version of SHIELD, starting from the ground up, will probably work much better for this series. It would be foolish to expect this show to deliver the Avengers flying in and out, but the problem is, SHIELD itself, as an organization, had been portrayed as so big and powerful, that it was troublesome to feel like the resources on this series were so much smaller and more limited – but now that has an in-show explanation.

Hopefully Season 2 will also pick up the pace in a big way, right from the start. The end of Season 1 reminded us of a lot of plotlines – including Skye’s parents and the potential for Marvel villain Graviton – that were still barely getting started, despite having had 22 episodes to do more with them. Even Coulson’s return, while pretty much explained, has a lingering mystery to it, with those odd drawings he’s doing. I’m hoping we’ll really hit the ground running with many of these elements next season, rather than oh-so slowly developing them. The decision to split the season into two distinct halves – with Agent Carter airing in SHIELD's place midseason – should hopefully help in this regard, with the 11-episode (or so) halves being treated like their own mini-seasons.

The Verdict

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been such an amazing thing to see pulled off so well, especially for those of us who grew up reading Marvel comics. Agents of SHIELD is a series that has the ability to deliver its own fun, engaging storylines occurring in corners of that universe, and at its best, it proved it could do just that. After several early missteps, the first season was delivering solidly entertaining, involving storylines by the end. Now, let’s see that momentum continue in Season 2!